Dojo Update, September 29th

Well, with the part one gradings happening over the next few weeks, the preparations certainly seem to have started in earnest in this weeks session. Last night we had a team of instructors and assistant instructors working hard over the first half of the session to make sure that everybody was ready for Sensei Tim to run a trial grading.

We were fortunate to have the experience of Senseis Nick San and John San as well as Tor San of course who have now between them been studying for well over 35 years! We are so lucky to have assistant instructors who can bring this much experience to a teaching night. We’re hoping to begin a series of instructor profiles on this blog just so the students can see the experience of our full team, so stay tuned for that! Also mention must go again to our brown belts; Sempai Dave and Sempai James, who are at the beginning their teaching careers, and did excellent jobs running their own sessions under the expert guidance of Sensei Richard, as always wonderful to see new teachers with a passion for martial arts begin their journeys.

The trial grading itself was more in keeping with a part two grading with Sensei Tim working very hard on trying to get the best out of everybody in terms of their kata performances and presentation skills. The general consensus of the ‘instructors team’ afterwards was that if they look this good now, imagine how good they will be at the National gradings in two months time! So well done to everybody and keep up the good work. The next few weeks will now be focusing on preparation for the more technical and combat related part one gradings.

“For those of you that are hoping to get a free place on the Art of Sword workshop it is now only ten days away. Please check with your sensei that you have a free place and if not, now would be a great time to apply, as there are still a couple of free places left!”

Work is now well underway for the proposed ‘Ladies Self defence course’. Unfortunately this is not open to any of our students as its a custom made course for a particular workplace, however we are looking for volunteers to help out, so we may well be calling upon the demo team again to attack sensei Hayley, and enjoy the result!

We are intending on filming elements of this course to put on our Youtube account and also on the facebook pages, so if you are a little camera shy then don’t worry, we will film you from behind! However being in a demo team is an excellent experience for high level gradings, so we hope some of you might be interested.

We have now short listed possible ideas for our next work shop, details will be appearing here on our Blog, Facebook page and Twitter account. We will let you know on our final decision soon, however we can confirm that, once more there will be some free places for our students.